Impact Imminent
by MK3A2
Summary: The last stand of the crew of the Prometheus. When you can't be with the one you love…
1. Chapter 1: Ravel

**RAVEL**

They said she went down swinging, which wasn't much of a surprise considering she'd always been the strong one.

What made it worse was that it had happened in the little corner store their family had owned ever since they were children running frighteningly wild in the shadier parts of Hong Kong. They were inseparable back then, playing soldiers and pilots in construction zones—she always won their imaginary battles, even though he was the boy and a whole two minutes older. He always tried to tell her that's why he should win, but it was hard to argue when she could put him in the dirt with relatively little effort.

He remembered once he'd goaded her into showing off how tough she really was, when she accidentally fell off the second story of an unfinished high rise and landed on a pile of rubble. He'd been terrified that she was dead, and worse, that he'd have to tell their parents where they'd been all day (not at school, that's for sure). But instead of dying she rolled off the broken concrete and spat some blood out onto the dirt, then punched him hard enough to bruise before making him swear he wouldn't tattle. He promised, of course, more afraid now of his invincible twin than of any potential parental wrath. She told their parents afterwards she fell off the swings at the playground.

It turned out she'd broken her arm and a few ribs, too. He asked her after they got back from the hospital if she had been scared and closed her eyes when she fell; she'd shrugged and told him that she liked to see what was about to happen, because things were only scary when you couldn't see them. He'd thought about it, and how the shadows were only frightening until he turned the lights on at night, and told her he thought she was brave. She told him to stop being a loser.

He left to become a pilot when they were eighteen; she joined the police academy. She'd tease him about being a nerd when he called her at three in the morning to complain about studying aerodynamics and astrophysics. When he visited her on his school holidays she would always drag him to the station where she worked to show him off, boasting to all of her colleagues about her genius brother. He'd be suitably humble while they were there, of course, but she knew he loved the attention.

After he started to work for Weyland Industries, his home visits grew scarce. Now she was the one calling at three in the morning, leaving him messages with playful apologies for not knowing what time it was on Planet Krypton or wherever in space he was. He tried to answer as often as he could, but he didn't always wake up or have the time; he still felt stabbing guilt when he thought about the sobbing message she'd left him to let him know their father had died. She quit her job on the police force after that to care for their mother, who certainly couldn't run the family store single-handed. He started sending them some money every month in the hopes that they could either close up shop or at least move to a different part of the city, especially after his sister confided to him about the store being robbed for the fourth time in two months.

He missed her call again one afternoon, but when he watched to the innocuous message she left he couldn't shake the feeling that something was terribly, irreversibly _wrong_ in the world. She didn't pick up when he tried her mobile, or the store, or their house. He called twelve times that day, but no one answered until the video screen for their store phone finally displayed the worn, tired face of her old sergeant at the police station. In a gruff voice, the man told him the paperboy had found the bodies early that morning, that it looked like several people had broken in the previous night, and that his sister had probably interrupted them during the theft. Wrong place, wrong time; they'd found her behind the counter with a metal bat, and it looked like she'd done some serious damage before being overwhelmed. The sergeant assured him that they could almost certainly match the DNA and loose teeth they'd found scattered around the store, and that they'd already put out the alert for the surrounding hospitals to watch for recent victims of enthusiastic bludgeoning.

Two weeks after the funeral the cops caught the four men who'd done it. He didn't watch the trial footage, but he taped the brief newspaper article with the guilty verdict up above the desk in his room on the ship.

They said she went down swinging, her eyes wide open because things were only scary as long as you couldn't see them. She looked her death straight in the eye; and just for her, he'd do the same.


	2. Chapter 2: Chance

**CHANCE**

He had many regrets about life, but only a few that were worth remembering.

They knew the statistics; less than twenty percent of pilots stayed married for more than two years. Still, they took the plunge—they were young and in love, invincible war heroes who could beat any odds. They were used to spending long periods of time apart, chatting only through video screens across galaxies. Absence only made the heart grow fonder; their crews would call them Romeo and Juliet, and make kissy faces whenever they called each other. When they were both honorably discharged in 2081, they'd spent an entire glorious year together before Weyland Industries snatched him up as a long-distance pilot.

He'd made so many promises. That he wouldn't always be gone, that he would quit after two years, then three, then four. That he'd be there for their daughter's first birthday, her second; that he'd make it to his mother-in-law's funeral. He meant to keep all of his promises, but good intentions alone never count for much, really.

In the years since they'd split, he could still smell her hair and the funny kiwi-raspberry lotion she used in the evenings. He could hear her laughter echoed in their daughter's mischievous giggles, feel their toddler's arms sweep around his neck after she launched herself from yet another heart-stopping height, shouting for him to watch how she could fly, just like her parents. Those rare weekends when he had custody and could see them both again were never long enough, but what else could you expect when Weyland kept him so busy? They never fought about him being gone for months, not anymore at least.

He bought their daughter a stuffed giraffe before he left this time, remembering how she'd proclaimed her love for the long-necked creatures a while ago. The girl was seven, and thanked him with a hint of pre-adolescent insincerity—it was only later when his ex-wife gently reminded him that their daughter had stopped obsessing over giraffes when she was six that it occurred to him he just hadn't been around since then. He'd awkwardly tried to apologize for being a lame dad, but his daughter just smiled patiently—of course you're lame, you're my dad.

His ex-wife had invited him inside after they got back from dinner, and after putting their daughter to sleep they sat on the couch and finished the bottle of wine from the restaurant in silence. He didn't mean to spill his heart out, much less to make her cry, but after she wiped her face on his favorite shirt she stayed against his shoulder and he held her like he used to, so many years ago. They fell asleep like that, waking only when their daughter climbed into his lap; she didn't really have nightmares, but he wrapped his arms around them both anyway to protect them from whatever it was that haunted their dreams.

He'd promised the next morning that he would be back, and that they would maybe give their relationship another try. He desperately wanted it to be true, but deep down inside he knew that when his ex-wife kissed him on the cheek on her doorstep, she didn't really believe him, either. He couldn't blame her for that. It wasn't exactly like he had a proven track record of reliability, after all, and he'd essentially already helped her prove they didn't really need him around.

When he threw his hands up in the air on his last wild ride, he thought back to all those broken promises and felt the familiar guilt of having let his family down one more time. He didn't believe in divine messages or the supernatural, but he hoped that somewhere, back on Earth, they would know he was thinking of them. With his eyes closed, he could feel the familiar weight of the two loves of his life, their sleeping bodies draped across his on a well-worn couch.

Silently, as the bridge lights flashed their dire warnings, he made one last promise, one that he hoped he could actually keep—he would see them both again on the other side.


	3. Chapter 3: Janek

**JANEK**

He didn't like being called a widower, but he had to admit it was part of who he was. His wife had stayed with him through a dozen deployments, enduring countless hours of stress and anxiety, and yet always smiled and wished him a safe journey whenever he left home. He made sure to call her when he could—it wasn't always possible with secrecy requirements, but they made do—and he would always bring her back a souvenir. She had had a shelf full of his presents, little knick knacks ranging from Jordanian sand in a bottle to some asteroid fragments he'd snuck aboard when his crew was escorting freighters back to Earth during the Z11 conflict. He wasn't allowed to tell her where he'd been for those eight months, but he didn't have to; she was the smartest person he knew.

Being so smart was what made the cancer so devastating. The doctors said they could cure it with the new drugs that had come out a few years earlier, and that her brain would be fine despite the small mass that showed up so dark and ominous on the scans. They'd agreed to try the regimen out—she threw up pretty constantly for two months, and they moved their pillows and blankets into the bathroom so she wouldn't have to run so far during the night if she had an episode. He joked that he liked sleeping on the bathroom mat better than their bed, and when she was finally cancer-free she bought him the same mat and hid it on his side of the mattress so he would find it when he came to bed that night.

She went back to teaching, and he left again; an easier assignment this time, to the NATO headquarters in Brussels. His tour was cut short, though, when the headmistress of the school where his wife taught had to call the ambulance because his wife had collapsed in the middle of a lesson on early 21st century American history.

The scans showed another mass in her brain, this one twice as large. The doctors said they couldn't put her back on the drugs she'd used the first time, not with the size and location of the new tumor. There were other drugs available that might work, but they were too expensive—they didn't have the millions of credits per year to spend, even if it would save her life. It was inoperable, too, set too deep. She'd be a vegetable even if they managed to take it out. She cried that night, and he'd felt so helpless.

He watched her waste away for the next six months. Her moods become less predictable the larger the tumor grew, and he tried so hard to be just as patient and understanding with her as she'd been with him the past fifteen years. He could see she felt guilty in those increasingly rare moments her brain worked normally, and she'd stretch out her arms for a hug and a kiss with tears in her eyes; he'd blink back his own and remind her he still loved her.

One morning after being put on bed rest she'd been particularly quiet, staring out their bedroom window at the suburban neighborhood. He'd brought her tea and a croissant, and she'd patted the bed next to her; he sat.

She told him she loved him. She told him she was dying. She told him that he was still young, that she couldn't bear the thought of him being alone for the rest of his life. He'd tried to tell her that she was the only person he could possibly love, but she'd put a finger on his lips and smiled. She told him he didn't need her permission to live his life after she was gone, but she knew he would never move past it if she didn't make him promise to try.

So he'd promised, and after she was gone, he tried. Over time, the pain he felt when he looked at her picture in his wallet grew less, and eventually he stopped needing to see it every few hours. He could hear her laughing at the guilt he felt when he realized one day that he was checking other women out, and that guilt, too, gradually dissipated. After leaving the Air Force he joined Weyland Industries to get as far from Earth as he could; the vast emptiness comforted him, and when he was alone on the bridge at night he usually imagined her as one of the stars that twinkled just out of reach.

If you can't be with the one you love, she'd told him before she died, then love the one you're with.

Luckily, he'd be with her again soon.


End file.
